A component mounting apparatus that mounts components (electronic components) on a substrate includes a substrate positioning unit that performs positioning of the substrate, a component supply unit that supplies components, and a mounting head that picks up the components that are supplied by the component supply unit and mounts the components on the substrate of which positioning is performed by the substrate positioning unit. At this point, a tape feeder that is known as a kind of a component feeder constituting the component supply unit makes a tape member in which components are housed in each of a number of component storage units that are aligned at regular intervals proceed, and supplies the components that are housed in the tape member to a predetermined component ejection slot.
This type of tape feeder includes a feeder main body including a tape passage that is a passage of the tape member, a sprocket that is provided rotatable under the tape member that passes inside the tape passage of the feeder main body and includes a number of projections on its outer perimeter, and sprocket driving means for drivingly rotating the sprocket intermittently and thereby moving each of the projections provided on the outer perimeter of the sprocket on a circular orbit having the rotation axis of the sprocket as its center. At this point, each of the projections provided on the outer perimeter of the sprocket has the shape of spreading toward the bottom in a direction of the rotation axis of the sprocket, and when the sprocket is drivingly rotated intermittently by the sprocket driving means, each of the projections provided on the outer perimeter of the sprocket is inserted into from beneath to be engaged with each of feed holes of the tape member that passes through the tape passage of the feeder main body before and after passing through one region on the circular orbit having the rotation axis of the sprocket as its center (a region at an upper end portion of a normal circular orbit), and leaves the tape member for the beneath of the feed holes after retracting the tape member. Thus, the tape member proceeds inside the tape passage of the feeder main body, and the components that are housed in the component storage units are intermittently supplied in succession to the component ejection slot (e.g., see Patent Document 1).